chalcogenides.com

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new porous material can soak up heavy metals from liquids like a sponge, U.S. researchers said on Thursday, offering a host of potential uses including removing pollutants such as mercury or lead from water.

The material is an aerogel, a type of rigid foam made from a gel in which most of the liquid has been replaced by gas.

"What we've made is a new kind of aerogel that is made of the same stuff that semiconductors are made of," said Mercouri Kanatzidis, a researcher with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

Classical aerogels -- which are made of silica or carbon -- have been around for many decades. "They are white and colorless and don't absorb any light," Kanatzidis said in a telephone interview.

Kanatzidis has made aerogels from chalcogenides, which are used in semiconductors.

"These new aerogels absorb light and they can be changed in composition from one kind to another," said Kanatzidis, whose work appears in the journal Science.

Read the article here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2618995520070726

Intel to Sample Phase Change Memory This Year
by Marcus Yam

Intel claims it will mass produce phase change memory before the end of 2007

This week Intel privately shared parts of its roadmap for memory technologies through 2008. Intel’s progress on phase-change memory, PCM or PRAM, will soon be sampled to customers with mass production possible before the end of the year.

Phase-change memory is positioned as a replacement for flash memory, as it has non-volatile characteristics, but is faster and can be scaled to smaller dimensions. Flash memory cells can degrade and become unreliable after as few as 10,000 writes, but PCM is much more resilient at more than 100 million write cycles. For these reasons, Intel believes
<http://mytechnologyuniverse.blogspot.com/2007/03/intel-to-sample-phase-change-memory.html>

Interfaces of chalcogenide solar cells: a study of the composition at the Cu(In,Ga)Se2/CdS contact
Schulmeyer, T. Hunger, R. Fritsche, R. Jackel, B. Jaegermann, W. Klein, A. Kniese, R. Powalla, M.

A. Klein. Darmstadt University of Technology, Institute of Materials Science, Petersenstrasse 23, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany

Copyright (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V.

ABSTRACT
The chemical composition of the Cu(In,Ga)Se2/CdS interface is studied using photoelectron spectroscopy, with monochromatized Al Kα and synchrotron radiation as excitation source. The samples were prepared by the decapping of Se layers, yielding a Cu-poor surface composition... more

Entrez PubMed: "Kavokin A, Malpuech G, Glazov M.

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ Southampton, United Kingdom.

A remarkable analogy is established between the well-known spin Hall effect and the polarization dependence of Rayleigh scattering of light in microcavities. This dependence results from the strong spin effect in elastic scattering of exciton polaritons: if the initial polariton state has a zero spin and is characterized by some linear polarization, the scattered polaritons become strongly spin polarized. The polarization in the scattered state can be positive or negative dependent on the orientation of the linear polarization of the initial state and on the direction of scattering. Very surprisingly, spin polarizations of the polaritons scattered clockwise and anticlockwise have different signs. The optical spin Hall effect is possible due to strong longitudinal-transverse splitting and finite lifetime of exciton polaritons in microcavities."

UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations - Full Citation & Abstract:

"Fabrication and modeling of cadmium sulfide/cadmium telluride solar cells by the close-spaced sublimation technique "

Showa Shell to Launch Commercial Production of Next-generation CIS Solar Battery in 2007:

"Tokyo, Aug 16, 2005 (JCN) - Showa Shell Sekyu has announced production of next-generation CIS (copper, nidium, selenium) solar batteries on a commercial basis in 2007.

Photovoltaic power generation that utilizes inexhaustible solar energy is expected to play a crucial role in curbing global warming.

Showa Shell has worked on solar batteries since 1978 with the aim of making them a new business and developed technologies to improve conversion efficiency and produce solar batteries in commercial volume.

Leveraging such technologies, the company will construct the world's first CIS solar battery plant for commercial production, beginning in December 2005.

To be located in Miyazaki Prefecture, the plant will have a capacity to produce 20MW of batteries per year. Commercial production is expected to start in the beginning of 2008."

Cranfield University, DCMT - Chemical Bath Deposition Growth of Cadmium Sulphide:

"Chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a convenient and low cost technique for growing thin films of many types of materials and is often used to grow the CdS window layer for thin film solar cells. Many different recipes exist for the growth of CdS, and our preferred recipe has evolved over several years. We have recently developed an ultrasonic technique that gives films with a high optical quality. The precursor solution contains cadmium chloride (0.0020 M), ammonium chloride (0.028 M), thiourea (0.057 M) and de-ionized water, with ammonia solution (22%) added to adjust the pH (range of 8.3 to 11.3). Deposition is performed in a double walled water jacket, which is placed in the centre of an ultrasonic bath.

Substrates are mounted on a glass holder and the solution is continuously stirred at a constant speed during deposition, while the bath temperature is increased to a maximum of 70±2 °C from room temperature at a rate of 3 °C min-1. The maximum bath temperature is limited by the rate of homogeneous reaction and the evaporation of ammonia from the chemical bath. This results in a colour change during deposition (see below) and has to be carefully managed to promote deposition on the substrate as opposed to precipitation into the solution. "

Cranfield University, DCMT - Fundamental Materials Properties:

"This group is involved in the experimental derivation of a number of different materials parameters for chalcogenide materials. "

The properties we have studied give us a better understanding of the solar cells as a whole, allowing the manufacture of more efficient devices.
Lattice Parameter
Phase Diagram
Optical Properties
Sulphur Diffusion

BULK EFFECT DEVICE MAKING - Patent Storm:

"United States Patent Class 438/900
BULK EFFECT DEVICE MAKING"

Spacer chalcogenide memory method and device
The present invention includes devices and methods to form memory cell devices including a spacer comprising a programmable resistive material alloy. Particular aspects of the present invention are described in the claims, specification and drawings.